“The most important thing in contemporary cinema is what it is lacking: urgency.”

Leading up to State of Cinema 2024 and the Close-up programme at Bozar next month, Bozar interviewed this year’s guest, Sergei Loznitsa. On 11 December, Loznitsa will present his State of Cinema – a text that holds cinema up to the light, an invitation to reflect on what cinema means, could mean, or should mean today. He has chosen La bête (2023) to accompany his State of Cinema address, the tenth feature film by French director Bertrand Bonello.

Astrid Jansen: How are you?

Sergei Loznitsa: I’m fine, thank you! I’m working on a new film... In October I shot a fiction film Two prosecutors based on a novel by Georgy Demidov. The action takes place during the times of the great terror in the USSR. At the moment, I’m editing the film.

You have made a large number of archive films and documentaries. More recently, in The Invasion, even though the directive was to leave the camera running, there is still an artistic construction ... What fascinates you about this interplay between reality and reconstruction through images?

When the full-scale war began back in February 2022, I had had other plans, but I felt it was my duty to make this film, because this country is my Motherland and because I feel pain seeing what is happening to it and to the people who I grew up with. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a very personal film, full of emotions. It’s not easy for me to analyse its structure. When editing the film, I was guided by my intuition, and certain episode sequences were positioned one after the other as if at random. I think that under the circumstances this is the best way of approaching the dramaturgy of one’s film. It’s difficult to analyse one’s own intuition and emotions. Boris Pasternak wrote “The more at random, the more truthful my verses are composed in tears…”

In The Invasion, some people feel that you depict the war ‘off camera’ by showing the everyday life of Ukrainians. However, this approach includes more than ever the direct experience of war itself. How do you create cinema in the midst of chaos?

Culture begins with putting the world in order. Chaos is the absence of a point of view. In a state of chaos, everything is possible and everything has the same value. When one forms a structure according to certain criteria, one also formulates a vision, a point of view, in which the surrounding world is organised in a certain order. When I say “point of view”, I mean a vision. Thus, chaos is the lack of vision. Basically, it is not only war that bears chaos. Without vision, everything around you becomes chaotic. Sounds, words, images are simply instruments. Cinema - which employs images, words, sounds and the entire body of filmic language, which has been developed throughout the existence of this art form – is also an instrument. If this instrument is used without a vision, the product of such usage will be simply adding to the existing chaos. Vision has to come before a film, and it is shaped during the process of creation of a film. Such is the nature of creative process.

Could you give us some of the thoughts you'll be sharing at Bozar in December: according to you, what is essential in cinema today?

The most important thing in contemporary cinema is what it is lacking. It lacks urgency. Most films which are being made today are stuck in the past. It is very rare to witness something new, something that constitutes an “event”, not to mention the creation of new trends, movements, schools of filmmaking or real breakthroughs in the cinema language. Perhaps, all these things do exist, but they escape the attention of the audiences, festivals and film critics. My knowledge of contemporary cinema is restricted by the films which I have an opportunity to watch. It’s possible that I know nothing about it.